|
Something besides a unity there must be or all would be
indiscernibly buried, shapeless within that unbroken whole: none
of the real beings [of the Intellectual Kosmos] would exist if
that unity remained at halt within itself: the plurality of these
beings, offspring of the unity, could not exist without their own
nexts taking the outward path; these are the beings holding the
rank of souls.
In the same way the outgoing process could not end with the
souls, their issue stifled: every Kind must produce its next; it
must unfold from some concentrated central principle as from a
seed, and so advance to its term in the varied forms of sense.
The prior in its being will remain unalterably in the native
seat; but there is the lower phase, begotten to it by an
ineffable faculty of its being, native to soul as it exists in
the Supreme.
To this power we cannot impute any halt, any limit of jealous
grudging; it must move for ever outward until the universe stands
accomplished to the ultimate possibility. All, thus, is produced
by an inexhaustible power giving its gift to the universe, no
part of which it can endure to see without some share in its
being.
There is, besides, no principle that can prevent anything from
partaking, to the extent of its own individual receptivity in the
Nature of Good. If therefore Matter has always existed, that
existence is enough to ensure its participation in the being
which, according to each receptivity, communicates the supreme
good universally: if on the contrary, Matter has come into being
as a necessary sequence of the causes preceding it, that origin
would similarly prevent it standing apart from the scheme as
though it were out of reach of the principle to whose grace it
owes its existence.
In sum: The loveliness that is in the sense-realm is an index of
the nobleness of the Intellectual sphere, displaying its power
and its goodness alike: and all things are for ever linked; the
one order Intellectual in its being, the other of sense; one
self-existent, the other eternally taking its being by
participation in that first, and to the full of its power
reproducing the Intellectual nature.
|
|